


reached for the last snack item at the same time au

by comradeocean



Series: old/abandoned fics purge [1]
Category: X-Men (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crack, Gen, The New Left, reached for the last snack item at the same time au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-16
Updated: 2014-10-16
Packaged: 2018-05-08 09:39:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5492549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/comradeocean/pseuds/comradeocean
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>reached for the last <strike>snack</strike> gluten-containing food item of the social forum free lunch at the same time au</p>
            </blockquote>





	reached for the last snack item at the same time au

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PragmaticHominid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PragmaticHominid/gifts).



> from october 2014. I was planning to do the entire list off of one of those tumblr posts of unlikely AUs. at the top of the txt file, I'd written: "for PragmaticHominid, 1 of probably 3 people max reading x men fanfiction for whom the following is not nonsense gibberish." rereading it now, I'm not even sure if that still includes myself. hope this isn't too weird, Prag!

Divining the trajectory of atmospheric disturbances as they formed and reformed in Conference Room B was a far more precise science than usual results from meteorologic study, Ororo decided. Unfortunately, the biggest cluster of the three had set its course towards the food table, exactly where she planned to be. 

Even without her abilities, the whirring gyre of camera phones would be a easy path to track as it circled around its central subject. But given that:  
1\. predictive nanoclimates tended to be generated when that many people stuck that closely together and  
2\. she had rudimentary knowledge in social psychology of The Crowd,  
Ororo might as well be stepping into an entirely deterministic universe. One where the good stuff at the buffet table was going to run out before she got to it.

Fucking celebrity academic activists. 

A particularly reedy voice unfurled above the concentrated hubbub she was due to collide with any second now, if she still wanted half a chance at a samosa, and resolved itself into a discernable sentence. "Can you repeat that? What you just said about the rendering of mutant biopolitics within a Deleuzian mimesis?" It sounded wretchedly apologetic. "Sorry, it's for the Vine."

Ororo granted herself a moment of nostalgia for the good old days when acolytes would be satisfied with a turn on the mimeograph and the occasional struggle sessions. It didn't last long. Conference food sucked in the '70s. And '80s. And '90s. Come to think of it, the catering wasn't so hot either at the Chicago _Mutanity and Struggle_ a few months ago; who's to say anything was getting better. Or did that come too close to a metaphor for something? God, she was so hungry she didn't even care. Ororo could practically taste a perfect potato-pea-chutney ratio through the air currents, even if it were her imagination doing most of the work. She was staying the course no matter who or what got in - 

"Storm! I was hoping to run into you here."

"It's Ororo," she corrected reflexively before recognizing the voice. "Magneto?" She looked for him in the compacted swirl of bodies amassing next to her then resigned herself to projecting her voice in his general direction.

"Magneto? I thought you were still in Venezuela." 

She heard him clear his throat, then the scramble of people as he parted them. Very Moses and the Red Sea, she had to admit. The same reedy voice from earlier was now excitedly narrating the precise experience of being caught in Mr. Lehnsherr's magnetic fields, probably to a livestream. 

Fucking celebrity academic activists. 

He was probably levitating himself a few inches off the ground too, the bastard.

When Magneto finally emerged in view, he dusted off his shoulders and offered her his most winning smile. "And miss the amenities of the preminent mutantist gathering in the Midwest? How could I?" 

She repaid his smirk in kind and gestured towards the table. "Well, don't hold back on my -"

He swooped down before she finished speaking, before she realized her fatal error.

"Marvellous. I love these. What are they called again?"

shit. SHIT. 

"Samosas."

The last samosa was irrefutably and irrevocably in the possession of one Erik Magnus Lehnsherr, Master of Magnetism, renowned writer, provocateur, social theorist. but usually just Magneto to friends, accomplices, and enemies alike.

"Oh, were you planning to eat it? I assumed you'd be with the gluten-intolerant identitarianists these days."

"Nope." _Pause._ "Not me." _Pause._ "Still just a researcher with too much paperwork to be begrudging other people for their supposed heresies - political, auto-immune, or otherwise. _Pause._

Ororo had the fleeting wish that it was quieter if only for the sound of her growling stomach to more pointedly punctuate the silence.

Magneto recovered. "Oh, my dear. That is a pity then you didn't get to have one of them since I was of the impression that the gluten-containing samosas are much tastier than the alternative." He had the audacity to laugh! "Then again, I'm an old doctrinaire fart, so what do I know."

She ignored him and looked morosely down the table where her remaining options had dwindled to abysmal proportions. Her fate was inadvertently sealed when Magneto forcibly dissipated his admirers, who then of course took to the buffet with gusto. 

"How is the C.X. doing these days? Still holed up in France?"

Ororo was about to answer in the affirmative until she noticed that Magneto had subtly thumped two crossed fingers over his left breast in mock salute. She stiffened. "Charles and I continue to correspond regularly." 

"Why the long face, we are all old friends." Magneto had the nerve to gesture towards her shoulder, as if he were actually going to give her a comradely pat on the back. Ororo glared at him, and the scrum of fans who were starting to regroup again around Magneto, replete with laden plates this time, those assholes. She made to turn on her heel to demonstrate exactly what she thought of that statement, and this whole absurd situation, but had to suddenly duck back closer to his ridiculous cape. Because last samosa as tragedy, its aftermath as farce. This was her life now.

"Jesus Christ, not now." she muttered. "Incoming paper seller, 3 o'clock."

"You organizers have no respect - "

"It's Ted! I promised earlier to hear his posthumanist polemic for old times' sake, but you know how he is once he really gets ragging on something. I can't be late for my own plenary."

Magneto continued in his sonorous speechifying way. "No respect at all for your movement forerunners."

Annoyed, Ororo pulled a quick burst of kinetic energy from his general direction. "That's easy for you to say behind your phalanx of theory cadets."

Whose hubbub was closing around him again, even as she was speaking. No amount socially acceptable temperature anomalies, or mini whirlwind drafts were going to dissuade them.

"Sorry, can't hear you." Magneto smirked, cupped his hand up to his head. "If you recall, my left eardrum got busted by a water canon in Quebec City." 

Fucking fuck celebrity academic activists.

\---

Ororo waited in a back alcove stage right, pacing in a small circle. A headache was coming on, if the ominous crackles of static electricity around her hair were any indication. The moderator stepped back from the curtains and cleared her throat. "We're starting in ten, and Ororo, there's a samosa floating behind your shoulder."

Indeed there was. As well as sauce to the side and, was that a pizza square, with cheese? All atop a paper plate whose edges were anchored by 3 napkin rings. 

Ororo peeked into the auditorium - to where Magneto was sitting in the audience. She caught his eye and shrugged towards the samosa. He shrugged back. It almost made her smile. She waved him a small sun-warmed breeze instead, and bit into the samosa. They had all paid their dues for the revolution.

**Author's Note:**

> again, from october 2014: "I'm picturing Charles here sorta as the amalgam of Kautsky, David Harvey, and Bob Avakian. He was active in a new left group in the 70s with Erik and Ororo, who briefly sided with Charles after the group splintered. and yes, in this case the x-men would be a cult-y paper selling sect. Erik = Zizek + Negri (+ Lenin???). The Brotherhood would be autonomists or maybe the Cheka. (shhh, none of this makes sense. just go with it.)"


End file.
